Swords Clashing
by ellequoi
Summary: "Hell is freezing over, and so changes a hot-blooded, immoral man of hate and fire into a cold, sharp woman with a military air and insincere charm."
1. swords clashing

swords clashing: dilandau

You had to be so _gallant_, of course. You couldn't even have a good reason for sneaking into Zaibach, and stupid things will sound smarter with a good reason. Not you. All you wanted was to bed the Asturian princess, possibly both of them. You didn't tell me that of course, just said the king had sent you (with damn good reason with your dirty intentions). I am intelligent–wasn't it painfully obvious I'd find you out?–you are not.

Why you had such an obsession with women I don't know. Women were the people who couldn't fight, and so had to make themselves useful by staying home and pretending to be men. There was nothing sensual about them. It was repugnant to try and think of a woman in sexual terms.

I must have been angry at you for not realizing this; I must have been angry at the normalcy you kept.

"So," I spat at you, "decided to get a look at the Zaibach inventions, did you?" I began to pace around you, pleased at the way my sword kept on hitting you. We were building up strength to inflict war upon the countries until they yielded to us. It was unfortunate to 

You were silent from your place on the floor. It infuriated me, that passiveness. Come to think about it, everything about you was starting to irk me badly.

I pulled out my sword, relishing the noise it made upon withdrawal for a second. Then, I indulged myself in rage, pulling out some of your precious hair, ripping your frilly shirt. I yelled out random taboos, insulting your mother because it makes a lot of boring men hot-blooded.

Blood was rising in your cheeks now; my efforts were not for naught. You lifted up your head and spat at me; I was forced to take your sword away, whacking you on the head with it. It made a satisfying crack and if I had stayed, I would have been bored, for you were unconscious.

I strolled back after supper, a burnt affair that I could only stomach after associating the blackened meat with the fire from whence it had come. The taste in my mouth was bitter from it. That bitter taste permeated the atmosphere of the evening for me.

You must have been hungry by the time I got back. Your own fault, of course. I wished I had brought my food in here to eat so that I could taunt you with it.

The doors of Zaibach made it so that a room was impossible to escape from, but you still lay in the corner with your hands tied back, not taking the only opportunity you had to leave. On closer inspection, I realized it was because you were still knocked out. I slapped you awake.

You awoke with squinted eyes and a bleary "What?"

Now was the time to act if I wanted to have my way with you. A smile grew on my face and I grasped a clump of your hair. Pulling your head back, I forced open your lips with my tongue and assaulted your mouth.

You were alarmed, like most people were. You didn't know that this was the way things were supposed to be. If I hadn't kept my tongue busy you would have bitten it.

It's good to remember how that was. I must admit you had quite a nice mouth, and after the first initial shock you even began to half-heartedly respond if just to prevent trouble. I think during this ardor I pulled out more of your hair, unintentionally this time.

You were terrified. I saw it in those big blue eyes that got wider and wider as I shut mine. Generally I wouldn't close my eyes on fear, but there was more to come; you would fear me more by the time I was done with you.

I was sweating now, though you were far worse, by the time my hand slid down your body. I whispered things in your ears that conveyed my hate for you. I was doing this because of my anger towards your attraction to women, I told you. There was no lust in this. I would merely do what I knew how to and would leave at the end. If you were lucky, you would as well.

Oh, didn't you act _innocent_? No, you said, this is a sin–you thought you had a choice! And I think you consented; past your moral duty your protests were feeble little whispers. A bit of tomfoolery with a fellow soldier, I suppose you tried to think about it. Since it was happening why not find out what it's like? You were too sexual to weigh the poignancy of such situations. Fool. 

I knew of your master Balgus and his expression, play through the pain. I told you about this and your boast-worthy training went against you as I played through your pain. Our rhythm was set to the sound of swords clashing in the practice room. Everything I can remember about myself _was_ set to those clashing swords, really. That was the way I lived, no doubt your life as well.

When we were finished I simply knocked you out again and put my clothes back on. Looking at you on the floor face down, with your hair fanned out around you, I realized something very horrible.

You looked like a woman from here. Women, a point both Zaibach and I would angst upon, were not allowed. They were anathema to the soldiers–should be, I thought, for anyone. And here, you–you–this was nightmarish!

Screaming, I pulled out my sword. For a minute I pressed it upon your neck. Did I want to kill you?

The obvious answer was yes...yet _something_ held me back, some presence in me that felt the same sympathy for the female sex, that felt some affectionate tie to you that went beyond my comprehension.

I relented to that presence, but not completely. Gripping your forehead–slippery with cold sweat–in one hand, I slashed at your hair with another.

Golden strands caught the light as they shed all around you. I almost drove my sword into your skull, but once again something intervened and I ended up dragging you to your Guymelef, where I left you.

I went back to that prison room with a box of matches.

Guess what happened to your precious hair, blue-eyed boy?


	2. freezing over

freezing over: Allen

It disgusts Allen, the way things have turned out. He can't help being glad for his sister's return... yet somehow, it isn't right. Amidst the music of bliss there is a discordant chord.

This _isn't_ the way it's supposed to be, he tells himself like a bewildered child. He isn't supposed to think of _him_ whenever he sees Selena, or think of her in the ways he's been thinking of her. For that matter, she isn't supposed to walk with such swaying hips and or fit her shirtwaists tight around her bust.

Hell is freezing over, and so changes a hot-blooded, immoral man of hate and fire into a cold, sharp woman with a military air and insincere charm. Allen holds the theory that Selena would have been, and still could be, a sweet, lively girl who everybody liked. Then Allen wouldn't keep on thinking of Dilandau when he sees her, nor everything that happened in that room.

It gets so that he can't stand to think of her for more than a minute, afraid of what he might do. He moves his room to the other side of the house, where he won't have to see her; his meals are a separate affair and when he leaves–if he leaves–he exits through the back door. It wasn't as if Allen ever intended to neglect Selena when she came back, but he never realized how self-sufficient she would be.

As he grows pale from bolting himself into one little room, the house seems to run itself. In reality it is Selena who has been doing the accounts and giving commands to the servants, but Allen is barely cognizant of the one maid who brings him clean clothes and draws his bath, occasionally trying to seduce him. This is a clockwork operation that does not stand to be questioned; Allen wouldn't be strong enough to do so.

He is lucky it is peace time, for he can't bear to leave his room anymore. It will have to end, but when he is in his room, wasting the day, everything is frighteningly large-scale in the outside world. Here things are small, things like the ladybug floating around his thin wasted hand that can be focused upon for hours at a time.

As much as Allen vaguely tries to steel himself towards one day having to leave, when someone slips a letter under the door one day he considers drowning himself in bathwater. The cursed epistle is from the king, and once again he is sending Allen out to an ambiguous fort of the wilderness. Though he does not know it, it is upon his sister's request. 

Honorable as ever, Allen must accept. He is mindful that it is the first time in a year or so–for he has lost track of time–that he will see his men. Gaddes he can remember clearly, but as to the others he will have to listen carefully to figure out their names again. 

A week later he leaves the room for the first time in months. Upon opening the door, he finds himself confronted with a mirror, a seemingly strategic position as to accentuate his pasty, angular face, the deep hollows under his eyes, and his limp dull hair. His clothes are of the fashion of five years ago, all the worse for wear as he has been wearing them ever since he read the king's message. 

It is Gaddes, good reliable Gaddes, who loads his trunk silently into the carriage. He regards Allen with worry and evident shock, but doesn't say anything but, "It's a week's journey," then mysteriously disappears in the house. He comes out with Selena. 

Allen freezes. Has she come to send him off? For the first time, it occurs to him that she may be coming as well. He would never be able to get anything done. But without any knowledge of this, Gaddes hoists Selena up next to him, rewarded with a wink and a smile. 

It is crowded inside the carriage–why aren't they using the _Crusade_?– and they are crushed against each other. There is an awkward moment's silence, then Allen stumbles out the door, offering to drive them. 

Selena says nothing, but gives him a stern look that reminds him of Dilandau as he leaves. Sometimes he gets the notion that she knows what happened and loathes him for it, but it is a sensational idea he tries to repress. To have him hating himself is bad enough, but to have his sister hating him as well... 

Allen soon regrets his decision to drive the carriage. He has almost forgotten how, and as hard as he is trying to concentrate upon it, he _would_ end up losing his way often, much to the chagrin of his long-suffering men. After eating lunch at a third-rate inn, Selena asserts herself by sitting at the reins; Allen prostates himself nervously in the cramped carriage without comment. His nerves are strained from being outside, unprotected, and after his long convalescence, as Selena delicately refers to it as, it is painful realizing human nature again. 

The traveling goes at a bumpier, quicker rate this time. Allen feels sorry for the horses, being whipped and driven into the ground, and decides to give them treats next time they switch them. This time comes when the next town comes upon them at dusk, and he hides in the stables, giving them sugar cubes. When he emerges, one of his men (Pyle, Allen guesses, but can't be too sure) beckon to a sleazy woman and point to him. They have hired a call girl for him, not too subtly, and he takes her into his bed with indifference, thinking of his sister and Dilandau as she moans insincerely. 

The nights on the road get worse and worse, for his men hire more girls–the only thing they can think of cheering him up–each more tawdry and lewd then the last, and he does what needs to be done with them. After, he shows them out and draws a bath to purge the sin from him, or at least the smell of the love-herbs they lavish on their bodies. 

They arrive at the post a day earlier because of Selena's merciless pace. Calluses have grown on her soft hands; their mother would disapprove of that. Allen laughs at the thought. Encia Schezar would fairly turn over in her grave to know about their horrible secrets. 

A decrepit servant wordlessly shows them to their rooms one by one. Allen has just decided he likes him by the time the servant gives him the room next to Selena's, but dislikes him entirely upon noticing the door interconnecting their rooms. He jams a chair against the door by why of locking it when the man leaves. Less temptation that way. 

For all his pains, a nagging feeling keeps him awake until, when he is sure Selena is asleep, he removes the chair and stealthily enters her room. She is lying on her bed, the blankets thrown off, wearing only her undergarments, and Allen stops breathing for several seconds at the sight of her. By the time he has reminded himself to breathe, he has crossed the room and is at her side. 

He looks at her face to see whether she is awake, but in the dark can't tell. Assuming this easy fact, he moves closer to her and caresses her cheek. Despite the indication that she is hot, her skin is cold–very smooth, Allen can't help but notice. 

Just like _his_. 

This in the breaking point for Allen. He has tried to be upright and honorable, but that clearly is not the path for him. He tried, really he did, but after facing adversary he is giving up and begins to unbutton his shirt. 

Just as he leans over her, her large, dark-lashed eyes open and he presses her hands back above the bed post. 

It's Allen's turn now. 


End file.
